Goings

Nothing to write and plenty of time to write it ... shooting the breeze until i feel the urge to go and have a bath, what a hard life it is to be lazy. There are new people arriving as my hostel becomes a surrogate summer school centre. I will be away myself next Monday, but until then I can say hello to people I will soon have to say goodbye to. I was playing football with a few of the new Italian arrivals on Monday, and today. There was alot of heat on Monday though the clouds stayed overhead. Today the sun was out in its scorching glory, but the draw of the joy of football kept me out. I might regret it later tonight. One of my best friends in the world Goren leaves now on Monday, and his going away party is on Friday. My brother Peter and Liam are coming down to Dublin to take their leave of him as well. It'll be a sweet and sad event, but i hope to keep our moment of saying goodbye to a discreet minimum. I'm starting to feel that such moments can't do justice to the weight of expectation placed on them, of conveying in a split moment what can't be described in a novel. So firm handshake and a knowing look in the eye time again. And a hug.

I had the happy invitation by Carlo (if you're reading) to his priestly ordination in Ferrara, Italy in early October, which I will of course attend. It has been so good to hear from my old friend at this important time in his life. His invitation was so beautifully expressed in an email, and so identifiably 'him'. It helped me believe that reconnections were possible, even after the distance of years. I came across my friend Paul's parental address and had a go at writing him a remember-me letter. They might have moved, his letter was dated almost ten years ago, but there's no harm in trying. There's a few more such letters that await my attention in the near future.

I went for a retreat for a few days in the Peace Centre in Phibsborough, and felt very much at one with the community of three there. I agreed to go to the world youth day in Cologne under their auspices with a friend of mine from Co. Antrim - that's you, Liam, now that I've decided to trust you with my precious website, you philistine you, go easy on me, you know I cry myself to sleep at night with the harsh things that people say! So think before you comment, Rupert ... We're joining the Jesuit-organised expedition to Belgium and France previous to the get-together in Germany, all in the second and third week of August. We're not quite youths anymore ... but circumstances seem to have conspired to ask us to go, and hey presto, never one to stand on the toes of a kind invitation, off we go to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds ... to sleep rough and not to seek for rest!

My whole life has become a fallowfield at the moment. My health isn't great, so I'm not pushing myself, which is somewhat of an understatement. But I'm doing an article on Etty Hillesum to be finished for the end of the month, and who needs to sweat whenever she is guiding you. And i feel that even as i write this (careful, Liam, put those words of vitriol back in their holster - or do say them anyway, i need to have some comments.) And tonight I will have a pizza goodbye with my friend Ann, who will not leave the country however, thankfully, as it is my leaving at the week end which we're 'celebrating' now. Comings and goings ... i have a poem about that, but maybe this isn't the place to invoke it. Oh, why not. And I must away to bathe ...


Coming and Going

If it does not come easily
It had better not come at all
Some such a poet once wrote
Sitting at my desk looking at photographs
Of a life’s story now sixty years ago
My freshly washed fingers in the full
Pink bloom of blushing youth
Sit at rest on these black and white faces
Yet still my thirty years tell on me
Under the table where my knees tenderly
Ache
This world is loss, sad loss, sand
Slipping through the fingers of sad time
While he lifts his head and shakes
Despairingly, or is that desperately

Dear Simone, a love letter for one never met
My loved ones dramatic stories are as yours
Happening now
What is true to your loving love of Truth now?
Do you taste it, like bread from earth?
My hand is starting to slow down now
So it’s my time to go
But it is good to be here
To have arrived
Meet me in a secret place
Where no one ever goes
In the fleeting mystery of now
Where my heart breaks
And any possible hope must be found